How exactly might Comcast abuse it's NBC Universal merger?

I'm surprised at how many people have such little need for details when condemning Comcast's merger with NBC Universal.  I have not heard a single vague concern justified with details relevant to the cable business or media business.  It's frustrating to have the people leveling these concerns act as if defining a "Monopoly" is sufficient detail to describe why the merger is bad.  I think it's a little more complicated then that.

Common vague statements:

1. Consumers will lose NBC content.
2. Consumers will pay a higher price for NBC content.
3. Comcast will institute bandwidth caps.
4. Comcast will elbow Netflix out of peoples living rooms or houses. 

Lets take each one individually and discuss in detail. 

* "Consumers will lose NBC content."

    First we have to define consumers.  Clearly any consumer with Comcast service will probably get more NBC content, that doesn't need further explaining. So "Consumers" starts to take a smaller definition.  Does it mean all non-Comcast customers?  Here is why I don't think so.  Viacom (another cable company) owns Paramount Pictures, Dreamworks, CBS, ComedyCentral, MTV, BET, etc.  TimeWarner (TimeWarner Cable) owns Warner Bros,  HBO, CNN, NewLine Cinemas and many others).  So if Comcast decided to get stingy with TWC or Viacom on it's NBC media assets it would probably result in a backlash from which ever one it affected and could itself see the prices it pays for say HBO for instance increase.  So Comcast has to play ball with the big cable companies. Our definition of "Consumer" has changed again.  It's non-major-cable customers. Is that it? What about Verizon?  Well to my knowledge Verizon doesn't have media assets to leverage on Comcast. Those two companies to compete head to head in geographical areas. If they revoked media completely they would be at the loss of viewership from all of Verizon's customer base, which would impact advertising revenue. Probably not desirable.  They could increase the price, to which Verizon could respond by saying we have plenty of media from remaining "Big 6" media studios so we don't need your higher prices. Verizon would pay a penalty in that some users might switch to Comcast if they really wanted NBC media. However, it isn't a clearly simple decision.  Consider that to license NBC content to Verizon they don't have to make any infrastructure expenditures which they would probably have to in order to consume the converting customers. One possible scenario for this concern would be if Viacom, Comcast and TWC colluded and denied content or charged exorbitant prices in an attempt to destroy Verizon and take over their subscriber base.  One has to consider the risk vs. rewards here.  Just selling media license rights to Verizon has no risk related to being split up by DOJ or sanctioned by FCC and it doesn't cost much to sign a licensing deal relative to the cost of making infrastructure investments.  The risk if they did collude could be incredibly expensive including losing all media profits after being broken up by DOJ order.  I doubt Verizon would stand by idle and not complain to the FCC and DOJ.  I'll concede that scenario could happen.  I'm not convinced it will based on a risk versus reward analysis.

* "Consumers will pay a higher price for NBC content."
I think the core question is "How are prices for media arrived at?".  A mistake people make is thinking about media like a commodity such as milk.  One studios content isn't easily replaced with another's like commodities.  Some consumers might have simple demands and be happy with a news channel or a comedy or a drama. I don't believe that is a norm.  In an abstract sense media is expression of ideas.  The expression is hard to duplicate because actors/actresses/directors/musicians/writers are very unique and you can't replace someones love for Danny Devito with a love for Sarah Jessica Parker.  Ideas can be copied but they can also by copy-written and protected from direct competition.  Value is difficult to assign with so much uniqueness and so much variation in appreciation.  Ultimately a marketplace will establish a price based largely on demand.  The question is what kind of market place is available to you as a subscriber or non-subsciber.  Physical media will always compete for price with it's streamed/downloaded counterpart.  I doubt that Comcast would stop producing physical media sold in brick and mortar or online retailers in favor of only their network since not everyone who buys retail has Comcast and therefore they would sell less media overall.  It's true some media doesn't make it to physical form; News is a good example. However, not many of us really consider paying directly for live/delayed news, it's packaged in our subscription or free over the air. I don't know that I have an answer to whether the price will go up or down.  Comcast does have a cost advantage to selling there own content to Comcast subscribers because they own the very content they are selling. If Comcast undercuts it's media competition or jacks up their bulk media prices they charge to other MultiSystemOperators (TWC,Viacom) they can expect to get jerked around in return by the same MSO's which themselves own movie studios and content catalogs.  A great question to ask is, "Would the cost of media ever go down given the interconnected nature MSO's owning content catalogs?"

More to come in following posts...